Woodworking specialists employ a wide variety of techniques and materials to enhance the aesthetics and value of their workpieces. The rarity of the materials used, notoriety of the woodworker, and relative amount of time necessary to create a product, among other factors, can have a large impact on the monetary value placed on the product. There is an ever-increasing demand for wood products that are both aesthetically pleasing and durable, while using materials that are lower cost and/or readily available to help reduce both price to the consumer and impact on the environment. In this regard, low-cost wood materials may be used to replace or reduce the amount of higher cost wood materials used in a product. Examples of low-cost wood materials are engineered wood products (e.g., particleboard, chipboard, medium-density fiberboard (MDF), etc.) and structural laminates (e.g., plywood), among others.
One difficulty in the use of low-cost wood materials in finished products is their relatively low aesthetic appeal when compared to higher-cost wood materials. Engineered wood products consist of small pieces of wood, often sawdust, left over from milling processes. These engineered wood products typically require a cosmetic finish (e.g., paint, veneer, linoleum, plastic, etc.) to be used as a finished product due to the irregularities and quality of the wood used. Similarly, structural laminates are often constructed from lower grade wood sections and may contain certain features that are not aesthetically pleasing in a finished product (e.g., knots, fill pieces, filler compound, etc.). With respect to structural laminates, a modification to the configuration of the laminate can lead to difficulty in meeting the durability requirements of the application in which the materials are installed.
When structural laminates are arranged in certain configurations, they can exhibit a tendency to fail under loading conditions. In some instances, the loading condition that causes a tendency to fail occurs in the most common use of the structural laminate as applied to the finished product—such as a normal force acting on a table top. Therefore, a need exists for methods that can be used to create aesthetically pleasing wood products from low-cost materials that can withstand the loading conditions present during common use of the product.